Dr Fatima Rajina’s book on how British-Bangladeshi Muslim identity transformed after 9/11

As she confronts how the War on Terror shaped the language and clothing of British-Bangladeshis in her debut book, Dr Rajina talks about the peril and importance of being visibly Muslim amid the rise of the far-right.

Dr Fatima Rajina, a Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, was in Bangladesh during 9/11. She was 12 years old watching Cartoon Network on TV, when a breaking news icon flashed in the corner of the screen.

‘I remember it so clearly because it was my dad’s youngest brother’s wedding, and if you know anything about Asian weddings, we have lots of different festivals leading up to the big wedding day,’ the academic tells me in the bustling Grounded cafe on Bow Road. 

‘I remember the house was so busy and crowded. There were people in the corner setting up the snacks, others were prepping the decor.’ She switched to the news channel. ‘I just remember seeing these Twin Tower blocks or whatever, and a plane flying in. And obviously, when you’re a 12-year-old, you don’t pay attention to it, you just go back to Cartoon Network, which is what I did.’

Of course, she didn’t realise it at the time, but that watershed moment when the World Trade Centre collapsed would be formative for the next 22 years of Muslim identity in Britain and beyond.

It’s that cataclysmic event that plays a central role in the sociologist and social anthropologist’s debut book, British Bangladesh Muslims in the East End: The Changing Landscape of Dress and Language, a rework of her 2018 PhD with the Centre of Islamic Studies at SOAS, University of London.

In its pages, the academic argues that the ensuing War on Terror and the rise in anxiety surrounding Islam were internalised by the community, changing it in the most intimate ways — from how men, women, and children dressed to the language they spoke at home.

For Dr Rajina, 9/11 marked a turning point in the already rampant stigmatisation South Asians were facing in Britain. ‘The Bangladeshi community went from all these different identities and then suddenly became Muslim or solely Muslim,’ she says. ‘We’re no longer speaking of people as Asian or Caribbean, we’re speaking of people through a faith term now, through religious terms, and calling them Muslims.’

She experienced this cultural transformation as a child, growing up between three different countries. Born in Luton, Dr Rajina spent her primary school years in Germany before her parents moved the family to Bangladesh, being troubled that none of their children could speak Bangla. They moved back to Germany after 9/11, but the culture had turned hostile.

‘I never really discussed it with my parents, so I can’t say from their perspective, but now as an adult looking back, I’m assuming it’s because of the intensification of the surveillance of Muslims, the distrust of Muslims,’ she says.

As the world turned its suspicious gaze on Muslims, Dr Rajina argues that British-Bangladeshis began a journey of radical self-transformation, an existential search for identity in the post-9/11 landscape. 

But far from being controlled by Islam’s detractors, the academic contends that the new narrative for British Muslims was one firmly authored by the community itself, with them at the helm of meaning-making.

‘There were a lot of things happening simultaneously post-9/11, that informed Muslims’ relationship to Islam, but also their sense of self,’ she says.

‘They’re saying it’s Muslims who did it, but what does that mean for me as a Muslim? Do I consider wearing the hijab now? Do I not? Do I grow a beard? Do I not? So it became this personal pursuit for almost every Muslim I’ve certainly grown up with. It became a personal pursuit of, “What’s our relationship with Islam?”’

As part of her research, Dr Rajina interviewed 43 British-Bangladeshis in the East End to understand the shifts she had observed in her community. A major finding was a marked change in dress. ‘I think a lot of people started seeing the hijab everywhere, then you started seeing the jilbab —  the long dress — then we started seeing the niqab as well, which became very prevalent here in Tower Hamlets,’ she tells me. 

While unmarried Muslim women in the 1970s and 1980s in Whitechapel and Spitalfields would don the shalwar kameez — a three-piece suit including trousers, a shirt and a loose headscarf they’d grab after hearing the athan — young Muslims today are embracing more normative Islamic dress, the hijab and the jilbab, which Dr Rajina says is commonplace fashion around the East End.

In a culture of suspicion and surveillance, when everyone had developed an idea of what and who a Muslim was, the academic argues that the hijab became a vessel for unapologetic self-assertion. 

‘It’s almost them trying to reshape the stigma that’s been imposed on them,’ Dr Rajina says. ‘So what they’re saying is, “Actually, I’m going to flip the script. Yes, I am going to wear my stigma proudly.”’

While leading Muslim scholars like Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah encouraged Muslim women to stop wearing the hijab in the wake of 9/11, as a way to protect them amid rising hatred, many Muslim women chose to do the opposite, refusing to become invisible in their identity. 

‘I just remember there was uproar in the Muslim community against him,’ says Dr Rajina. ‘Muslims were not having it. They said, “No, we will endure the violence, even with the hijab.”’

It’s not just women’s dress that the academic focuses on. She’s fascinated by the developments in men’s fashion and pays special attention to three garments: the funjabi (a loose shirt, often very colourful), the lungi (a sarong tied around the lower waist), and the thobe (an ankle-length, long-sleeved robe). 

The thobe once had a specific theological significance and would tend to only be worn by Muslim men who had taken Hajj, the pilgrimage to Makkah, modern-day Saudi Arabia. ‘But now when I see it, I just associate it with Muslims,’ says Dr Rajina, ‘And I think the general population generally does as well.’ 

While archival photographs of Bengali uncles in Brick Lane from the 1970s show them donning the style of the times — flared trousers, platform shoes, and Ray-Ban sunglasses — young Muslim men today are distinguishing themselves through their sartorial choices, donning the thobe and growing the beard in a visual performance of Islamic faith.

The book contains two chapters devoted to language, charting the gradual decline in Bangla over the past two decades. Instead of learning their mother tongue at supplementary schools, as was commonplace in the 1980s and 1990s, third-generation British Bangladeshis are now encouraged to master Arabic, the language of the Quran, and it’s even infusing the language spoken at home.

‘‘Some of the participants I interviewed expressed a disgruntled response to Bengali, saying, “Well, Bengali’s not really that useful, I only need it with my parents or grandparents. I need Arabic more. I need Arabic for the afterlife.”’

It’s hard to say why, but for Dr Rajina, the increased focus on Arabic as the lingua franca for Muslims may be a part of the community’s metaphysical search for identity in an increasingly complex world.

It’s pertinent that the academic’s book is being released this summer, at a moment when Britain is gripped with far-right riots targeting migrant communities, ethnic minorities, and overwhelmingly Muslims. 

After returning from Germany, she spent her teenage years being schooled in Luton when the English Defence League (EDL) began emerging, making the local cinema, chicken and chip shops, and the arcade all off-limits. Now, it feels as if history is hideously repeating itself. 

‘It triggered a lot of my teenage memories seeing what we saw this weekend because so much of my late teenage years were informed by curfews by my parents because of the fear of the English Defence League,’ she says.

‘I saw a specific video from Middlesbrough [with] these young kids, white kids who are going into these areas and quite literally shouting, “Where are the Pakis? Where are the Pakis’ businesses and shops? And this is wild to me because these are stories I grew up with about the 70s.’

When she saw a post on Facebook circulating that the EDL were planning to demonstrate near her parents, her anxiety reached new heights.

‘I literally rang my parents, basically telling them, “None of you are leaving the house tomorrow.” Yesterday, I called again, I said to my dad, because my dad only prays in the mosque, “I’m sorry Dad, you’re not going to go to the mosque, you’re going to stay put, and you’re going to stay indoors.”’

By encouraging her parents to stay inside, it’s clear that Dr Rajina views being visibly marked as Muslim in today’s world as dangerous. The events of the past few weeks are reminiscent of the horrors she surveys in her book, from the brutal murder of 24-year-old Bangladeshi textile worker Altab Ali in Whitechapel in 1978 to the gang of white men who attacked 17-year-old Quddus Ali in Shadwell in 1993.

But crucially, the story doesn’t end there. As Dr Rajina’s scholarship highlights, whenever the far-right reared its head in the East End, local migrant communities mobilised to confront it. From the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to the 7000 protesters who marched to Downing Street following Ali’s murder, east Londoners have always fought to protect their own amid violent racism.

Starting in the 17th century with the arrival of the first Bengalis in Britain and continuing to the present day, Dr Rajina delivers a groundbreaking study of a community that has become the obsessive fixation of so many. 

By tracking the changing identity of British Muslims since 9/11, from the language exchanged between mothers and daughters at home to the everyday fashion choices of teenage boys, Dr Rajina unearths how a culture of surveillance has managed to penetrate the community on the most intimate and psychological of levels.

Even so, the book pays tribute to how Muslims have managed to self-assert amid scrutiny and wear their heritage proudly and loudly as a badge of honour in a hostile world.

British Bangladeshi Muslims in the East End: The changing landscape of dress and language (£85, 30 July 2024, Manchester University Press) is available for sale here.

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